India under British Rule

Description

This poem was written by the Irish poet Denis Florence MacCarthy (1817–1882). It was published in the first issue of a journal which had been published in Urdu under the title (achwat/achuwwat) since 1916 in Istanbul. The poem is illustrated by photos depicting hunger, starvation, and disease in India during the war. The editors chose this poem in order to raise questions on the war and its effects on ordinary people, at different times and in different parts of the world. They aimed to highlight the similarities between people in Europe and Asia who suffered under colonialism, imperialism, and war in similar ways.

Context

The poem was published in the first issue of the newspaper Brotherhood edited by the Indian Muslim revolutionaries Abdul Jabbar Khairi and Abdul Sattar Khairi in Istanbul in 1918. In the introduction to the poem the editors expressed the similarities between the situation described by MacCarthy in 19th-century Ireland and the current situation in India; both instances were due to British oppression.

Cultural Exchange in a Time of Global Conflict:Colonials, Neutrals and Belligerents during the First World War

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement no 291827.

The project ‘Cultural Exchange in a Time of Global Conflict: Colonials, Neutrals and Belligerents during the First World War’ is financially supported by the HERA Joint Research Programme Cultural Encounters (www.heranet.info) which is co-funded by AHRC, AKA, BMBF via PT-DLR, DASTI, ETAG, FCT, FNR, FNRS, FWF, FWO, HAZU, IRC, LMT, MHEST, NWO, NCN, RANNÍS, RCN, VR and The European Community FP7 2007-2013, under the Socio-economic Sciences and Humanities programme.